My conservative Christian former best friend used to say that too much prayer rots the brain. Earth Science 4th Edition provides clear evidence of this right from the blurb at the start of the “Oceans and Seas” chapter. They begin talking about desalination by saying wow, there’s more people on Earth than ever! Yay! “God didn’t place a limit on how many people should inhabit the earth.”

I really wish the Bible had a verse placing strict limits on the total population, and ordering dominionists like the BJU believers to adhere to a strict “One child, no conversion, no evangelizing, and for My sake put a condom on that thing!” policy. Because it seems they believe that God wants as many people stuffed onto the planet as possible, limited resources be damned. They acknowledge the fact that a huge population makes things like having enough drinking water for everyone a serious issue. But they pretend that’s all fine, since we invented desalinization plants. Breed away! God placed no limits on population, so let’s have humans stacked a dozen deep over every square inch of the planet! Fuck logic and sense, yo!

Fools like this are why I’m one of those atheists who thinks we really need, as a species, to do away with the idea of holy books* all together. We can’t be trusted with it.

Dominion is a strong theme at the beginning of this chapter. “Oceans for Man’s Use” is the very first section. After giving us lots of facts about the oceans, like their size and how they help regulate the earth’s temperature, and how most of our oxygen “comes from photosynthetic organisms living in” them, they tell us it’s important to exercise dominion over them.

Oy. These people are massive control freaks. Instead of caring for or partnering with things, they want to exercise jackbooted thuggery over it all. In a “good and wise” manner, they hasten to assure us. Considering they think it’s a bonza idea to fill Earth with people until there’s no room for anything else, I’m not believing they’re qualified to judge what’s good or wise.

I’m dead before we begin. They’re just… I mean… well, look at this shit:

We know that there was at least one continent where everything lived when God created the earth. Creationary geologists think that the continent foundation or basement was probably the rock we call granite, which makes up the deepest rocks under the continents today.

They yammer about how they can totes see the “key geologic phases of the earth” if they just look at the strata “from a biblical viewpoint.” They think they see the vast majority of rocks either forming in or being redeposited by the Flood. They have no real idea how minerals precipitate from a solution to form masses of rock. They don’t know how consolidation happens. The things they think happened in a single Flood year don’t happen that fast and/or in those kinds of conditions (here’s one example). We’ve studied this. We’ve done experiments. We know.

Of course, they admit the Flood didn’t create the entire geologic column. There was that mythical post-Flood ice age, carving valleys and dumping glacial detritus all over the place. Never mind that we have evidence for multiple ice ages – just put on your Biblical Blinders, kids, and you’ll see there’s only one!

Take your seasickness prevention pills and weigh anchor, my darlings. We are embarking on a long voyage, and I’m afraid it isn’t the lovely salt sea, but an ocean of creationist bilge we be sailin’. BJU has got a lot to say about oceanography. A good portion of it is utter bunkum. And there’s three bloody chapters of this shite.

It’s about time we finish with the risible ACE PACE 1086, and the subject matter segues nicely into the chapters on oceans we have coming up in our other “science” textbooks. Besides, after last week’s installment, I’m sure you’re all on the edge of your seats wondering if the Loyaltons are about to go splat against a mountain. So let us continue our flyover with them, and see where we end up. Continue reading “(Repost) Adventures in ACE XII: Wibbly about Water”→

It’s New Years – make predictions for what geology things WON’T happen in 2017. The magnetic pole won’t flip. Yellowstone won’t erupt. There won’t be record high Arctic sea ice. Scientists won’t suddenly admit that climate change is a Chinese hoax.

This topic is marvelous. I love it. But I don’t want to do the predicting alone: I want to hear your prognostications, too!